FreightCar America, Inc. Shoals Facility located in Cherokee, Alabama manufactures a wide variety of quality railroad freight cars. Embarking on a mission to become more productive and efficient and to enhance business capacity, Shoals Facility management recognized the need to embrace a Lean philosophy of continuous improvement. The company enlisted the continuous improvement expertise of the Alabama Technology Network and its affiliate, The University of Alabama’s Alabama Productivity Center to facilitate Lean Manufacturing and A3 Problem Solving training and implementation. Twenty-three Shoals Facility employees from various functions including production, quality, engineering, purchasing, and safety earned Lean Manufacturing Green Belt certification by participating in this process. Furthermore, using the A3 Continuous Improvement approach these employees themselves created and designed process improvements resulting in over $1.3 million in estimated cost savings, so far, and over $241,000 in cost avoidance. Shoals Facility managers are also seeing an 85% increase in production on one of the production lines as a result of some of these employee A3 continuous improvement activities and are confident that these proven techniques have launched the beginning of a culture change among the Shoals Facility employees and will continue to be used to produce significant improvements and cost benefits.